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A tenacious filter program inside Symantec's Norton AntiVirus software is making it difficult for some users to access their own e-mail.

Symantec designed the feature to intercept malicious e-mail messages before they land in the user's in-box. However, it is causing confusion amongst users, and it is angering Internet service providers, according to computer troubleshooting Web site BugNet.

Norton AntiVirus versions 7.0 and above contain a program called Poproxy. This program sits in between the user's e-mail client and the mail server run by the ISP. When the user installs Norton AntiVirus, the program changes the e-mail client preferences to connect to Poproxy instead of the service offered by the ISP. Incoming e-mail goes through Poproxy for a security scan.

When Poproxy fails to run--often due to a conflict with another system process--users get an error message saying: "The connection to the server has failed."

Symantec: Trouble Yes, Flaw No

Symantec admits customers have reported e-mail trouble, but the company does not regard this as a product flaw.

"Usually it is a configuration error or installation trouble, nothing that can't be resolved," says Chris van der Grift, consumer product lead of Norton products at Symantec.

Van der Grift has no information on programs causing conflicts with Poproxy, but says there has been another factor blocking access to e-mail: Unknowing users incorrectly disable the Poproxy program because they don't trust it.

"Overcautious customers tend to disable Poproxy manually in the Task Manager (accessed by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete in Windows); others get weary of the program and decide to block it when their personal firewall reports that Poproxy is trying to connect to the Internet," says van der Grift. "They don't realize that Poproxy is part of Norton AntiVirus."

Resetting the preferences in the e-mail client to the ISP's mail server will fix the problem, but will disable protection by Poproxy. However, according to van der Grift, the system is still secure with Norton Auto-Protect enabled. This feature scans all files before they are run.

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